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Message: 5744

Author: dm_boozefreek

Date: 23/03/2006

Subject: Re: Special Editions

 

Daniel Wrote:

A SE is a good occasion to eliminate non-critical bugs as well. For
example, in "Willy's New Mansion" there are a number of instances
where vertical guardians have their start position set to 0, or
another value which is above their upper boundary. This makes
them "jump" at the moment of entering the room, appearing for a
split second at the top of the screen and then moving
instantaneously to their upper boundary. I believe now that it is
very inelegant, and I will eliminate it in the SE. But at the time
of creating "Willy's New Mansion" I wasn't aware of the phenomenon.

The original version of "Skint Willy" suffers from this very
problem, as did the original version of "The DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!!".

2. One can enrich the game with elements / features which were not
introduced from the beginning because at the time of creating the
original edition the author didn't know about them or didn't know
how to introduce them.

Indeed part of the reason I made the SE of "The DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!!"
and almost the entire reason I started the SE of "Skint Willy" way
back in 2002. The rest of the trilogy was but a brain cell that
hadn't been stimulated with beer or drugs. Since I was determined to
SE "Skint Willy" I also left the next 2 episodes open for
modification, and always said I would come back to them one day. But
as far as SE's go "Still Stealin'" is likely to be the least
modified. I'd almost perfected my style by the time I finished that
game. However I lst the plot with "Bizarre" a little and my style was
somewhat questionable (in my opinion).

In the SE of "Willy's New Mansion", for example, I am planning to
introduce new music (probably not /really/ new, but copied from some other game, perhaps the original "MM"). I wouldn't have known how to do it back in 2004 when I created the game; now I think I know and I would like to make use of it.

It's really been 2 years since "Willys' new mansion", jeez how time
flies?

3. One can enrich the game with elements which were not introduced
from the beginning because the original game engine did not allow

it.

A' la day 2 of "7 days in the sun", was 48K now JSW64 version V.

As a matter of fact, I have a slight conceptual problem with this
phenomenon, because I think it will contribute to inflate the
overall number of existing games - as shown by Dr. Andrew Broad's
excellent list - unjustly. That is because if an author creates a SE of his/her game in the same engine, it will probably end up beside
the original edition on Andrew's list (as one entry). However, if
the SE is created in a different game engine, even if the changes
are very minor, it will merit a separate entry

This is a little unfortunate, IMHO, but I don't see a good solution
to it. The only thing I can think of is that on Andrew's /merged/
list such cases could have just one entry. But I don't feel about it strongly enough to even suggest it.

This is the curse of having a complete list, but at least if it's
released as a boxset in the merged list Andrew can just put boxset
and put the formats in the .zip in brackets next to the file name.
Single files however may become problematic, and I suppose it would
be up to Andrew to catergorise them :-)

4. One can make full use of the possibilities offered by the
original game engine.

With the disassemblies and the versitility offered by the HEX editor
who knows what the future will see, regardless of the game engine
format. The futures bright the futures orangery LOL (sorry very bad
joke)

5. One can generally improve the game by improving graphics,
guardian movement, adding new rooms, etc.

That point is quite obvious, and probably one of the main reasons
for creating SEs.

Exactly.

You could probably think of a number of other good reasons for
creating SEs. But I will just say that you could also look at it
from another angle and claim that thanks to SEs:

- the player receives an improved and expanded product, which may
give him/her new joy, partucularly great in case of a game
previously uncompletable now becoming completable.

- the author has the satisfaction of having created /the final/
version of their product, containing features which for various
reasons it was impossible to include in the original edition.

Daniel my friend I couldn't have said it better myself, you've hit
the nail right on the head with that last statement.
At the end of the day there's no shame in special editions take
Streetfighter for instance that has about 2 million variations all
practically the same but all more more popular than the last (and all
shameless money spinners, but that's the beauty of freeware you can't
really complain about something being similar cos' it didn't cost you
anything anyway).

 

 

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